Oct. 25, 2013

Radio host Steve Funk at work on the 'Take Names Later Blues' show on KUNR. / Photo by Bill Nagel/Courtesy Reno Blues Society

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Communication is Steve Funk’s specialty. Whether he’s extolling the virtues of buying local through his advertising and public relations firm, Probis, or playing bass in a blues band or sharing the stories of early blues pioneers on his “Take Names Later Blues” show on KUNR, Funk is always communicating a message.

Funk caught the radio bug in the late ‘60s when, at high school in Carson City, he took a multimedia class that let him participate in a radio newscast on a local AM station. From there, he worked for KUNR doing “free-form” radio. “Since that time, I’ve been doing local radio almost constantly,” he said.

He performs with several local bands including power trio Ignition, the Wabuska Yachting Club, the Tim Tucker Band and others. As a bassist, his skills are in high demand.

In this week’s “Five Questions With…” series, we speak with Funk, who can be heard every Saturday on KUNR 88.7 FM from 3 to 5 p.m. Local bands interested in being featured on the show should contact Funk at sfunk@probisreno.com.

Question: Tell me about your early days in radio and what sort of records you were spinning.

Answer: It was the early ‘70s, so what was happening in San Francisco with Tom Donahue and KSAN was hugely influential in what I was listening to and thinking about. It included everything from original blues music to the new rock bands that were coming out like AC/DC and Rush, who were getting their first records out at that time, to the classic stuff I was listening to like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I learned how important it as to mix those things together in ways that related to what was actually going on in people’s lives.

To me, that’s the real magic of what music and radio bring to people — that connection between the story and the song and the experience of their real lives. It creates moments that really live with people for a lifetime.

In the early ‘70s until the early 2000s when we got into this digital music download situation, people were very interested in collecting records. They wanted to know about the artists because the experience of the artists kind of lend more depth to their own experiences.

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Q: So how is that different now that we’re in a more digital age in which artists can directly reach their audience without the aid of a label?

A: That’s good thing. It’s taking the middle man out, because, in truth, when you look back at the ‘70s and ‘80s, the corporate influence of the record companies was exploitative of the artists.

Q: So what role does radio still play in this vastly changed landscape?

A: It’s good to take the middle man out of the deal and connect the artist directly with the listener. The problem was that Napster came along and it was ahead of the curve, so it created a situation where the artists were actually being used in even more egregious ways by the audience than they were by the record companies who were abusing them for decades. That, in itself, was kind of counterproductive in the world of music. Now we have what we have today and we can’t go back. What I lament most about that situation is that it turned the musical marketplace into a place for single purchases rather than album purchases. Even though there’s a huge culture of celebrity around musical artists in pop, what we’re missing is the artist’s true vision. Back in the day when the Beatles put together “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band,” it was a concept record from beginning to end, telling a much larger story than any one of the songs told on their own. That’s what we miss now. i believe the culture has been cheapened a lot by the way we approach music now from a market standpoint.

Q: How did you get involved with the “Take Names Later Blues” show?

A: I was at KUNR from 1973-78 and I’ve always had a great place for it in my heart. Roger Slugg had brought the blues show initially to KUNR. We got to know each other and when he decided that he was done being in Reno all the time, he asked me to fill in for him. At the time, I hadn’t been doing a radio show for a while. I’d done an acoustic program on KTHX, but that ended. So I said, “yeah, that sounds like a great idea.” I love the blues, have knowledge about it. This was around 2010.

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Q: Do you spend a lot of time researching what you play on the show?

A: I do. The blues really encompasses American music from the 1700s until today. It’s the original American musical form. It came from the molding of what was coming from the religious communities of the Northeast of America, with those influences being introduced to the Africans who were enslaved in the South. Taking the cadences of things like Europe like Gregorian chants, and mixing that with what was going on in African tribal music, they came up with what they called the “field hollers.” These are early forms of music that are about suffering, about the blood and the guts and the bone and the sinew of what was happening in America — not at an academic level, but at the grass roots people level. From there, it’s influenced every other form of music that’s come along in the United States.

Q: Do you have parameters, such as no British Invasion blues, only the authentic item allowed?

A: I credit Roger with setting up the name of the program on KUNR, which is “Take Names Later Blues.” Of course, “Take Names Later” is only half of a phrase. The other half is “kick ass.” What I’ve brought to the program is a little bit more of an academic approach. I really admire (musical historian) Alan Lomax. Some of those guys in the early part of the twentieth century took tape recorders down south and said, “this stuff is so great we have to capture it, academically, if nothing else.” For me, it’s important to bring all the styles together. In the show, I’ll do theme sets, like jump blues or about post-war Chicago blues or pre-war New Orleans. It gives the audience a glimpse of songs that epitomize what was happening in that part of the music. People pigeonhole the blues, saying, “oh, it’s 12 bar blues,” but part of the magic of it is its simplicity. It has fewer rules than other forms of music do, so it allows for more inspiration. I have two hours. I try to expose the audience to a well-rounded picture of what the blues is about because the blues is so influential in all the rest of our music.

Q: Do you have a desert island playlist?

A: That is such a tough question. John Lee Hooker and Taj Mahal and Howlin’ Wolf were what got me started into the blues through my mom, who listened to them in our home in the Bay Area. I remember being turned on by music at the age of 4. We were going to dinner and my uncle turned on the radio and the first thing I heard was Elvis Presley singing “Hound Dog.” It opened up the world of music to me.